Father of Mine
by trascendenza
Summary: An AU written in drabble format. Ennis and Jack don't part after coming down off the mountain.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: **This was written for my Brokeback Mountain claim on the **drabbles100** LJ community. The goal is to write one hundred 100-word-drabbles, each for a prompt (that's what the headings below are, the prompts from the table). I'm just explaining this because if your first instinct is to ask me to expand on these, well, I can't, it would sort of defeat the purpose :) I hope it's readable anyway.

* * *

**001. Beginnings**

"Goin a have to call Alma," he said, chewing on the inside of his cheek and running his finger along the door handle.

"Can stop by a phone in town," Jack offered, opening up the driver's side. "Don't got a come, you got better things to do."

Ennis looked up then, silence hardening into something like a silent commitment. "You sure I won't be no trouble, I'd be glad to come."

Jack tried to smile but wavered. "Any other stops you need fore we get up to Lightning Flat?"

"Nope."

"Good," Jack got in, Ennis close behind him. "Let's get."

**002. Middles**

"Bastard shortchanged us," Jack muttered, glancing over at Ennis who was smoothing out the measly bills.

"Didn't bring back all his sheep," Ennis said, but there wasn't much conviction.

"Fucker knows I need it," Jack continued, jaw tight and eyes burning the road ahead. "Don't know who he thinks he is, deductin from us like we're responsible for the weather."

Ennis folded up the bills and held them out. "Can have mine, you need em."

Jack shot him a look, the line of his body softening a little bit.

"Thanks, friend. You need it just as much as me, though."

**003. Ends**

Everyone else long gone, they stood like wary sentinels, watching over the proceedings as if to make sure everything was done right.

Jack's face was drawn, expression warring with each _thud_ of earth on earth.

"Always said I'd celebrate," he whispered, choking out a laugh that bordered on a sob. "Can't much say I'm feelin like it right now."

Ennis scuffed his boot. "Ain't the way things ought a go."

Jack laughed-sobbed again. "Maybe for you." He crouched down and grabbed a handful of dirt, throwing it into the gaping grave with all his might.

"Good riddance, you fuckin bastard."

**004. First**

The stars were pale above them, grass damp below. Evelyn was asleep on the couch inside; the service had worn her out.

"Never did tell him what I thought a him," Jack said, exhaling a forceful white ghost in the air, arms laid out behind his head.

"Reckon you did today."

"Yeah." Jack turned over, back to Ennis. "Reckon I did." He was quiet for awhile, picking idly at the grass and staring ahead sightlessly before he asked, "Think he heard?"

Ennis chewed at a hangnail. "Chances are. Can't say I've given it much thought."

Jack nodded. "Hope he did."

**005. Last**

Evelyn sat in the chair, tucking her dress underneath her, resting her arms on the chair like she might blow away if she didn't, so much misplaced dust.

She carefully unfolded the paper, running her fingers over the script as she read, out of practice but necessity compelled.

"What's it say?" Jack asked, his foot tapping against the floor, ready to run outside if he needed to. Plenty of things to beat out there.

She raised her head slowly, tears glittering, suspended, holding out the paper.

"He left it all to you, Jack." They fell when she spoke his name.

**006. Hours**

She put a hand on his tense shoulder; if it had been anyone else, he would have jumped, but he soothed under her touch, jitters calming out of his muscles.

"Have some coffee, won't you?"

"No thank you, ma'am. Was thinkin bout goin after him."

"Let him be, son," she said, drawing him almost imperceptibly away from the window. "He'll come back when he's ready."

"He do this a lot?" Ennis asked, sitting at the table and smiling a little when she brought him a steaming mug.

"No," she said, wrapping her hands around her own. "But his father did."

**007. Days**

"Ain't even been here that long," Ennis said, tightening his grip on the black plastic.

"Been a lot longer than you said."

"Look, Alma, I got a friend who needs help. You know what it's like losin a daddy, huh? This don't change nothin. I'm comin back soon and we're gettin married, okay? You just got a give me time to settle things up here."

She was silent at his sudden rush of words, surprising in their wealth and vehemence.

"Sure enough." He cringed at the meekness that hadn't been there before.

"Alma, I'm—"

But she'd already hung up.

**008. Weeks**

Evelyn felt the days gather like a film over her, weighing her down closer to the ground with each subsequent one. The grave looked like a wound in the earth at first, but just like her, it was inexorably covered in the film of time, until the grasses started peeking up around the edges, and the dusts settled down over them both. Yet she couldn't sink down to join him.

Jack boiled over with a rage that scared both her and Ennis, hot and fierce, unabated even as the distance grew.

But she'd stay as long as her son needed.

**009. Months**

"How long it take them to sell your place when your folks kicked it?" Jack asked as they tossed out the feed, his eyes showing more interest than they had in days.

Ennis's mouth tightened but he answered evenly. "Day. Auctioned off, highest bidder. Wasn't regular sellin."

"Hmmm." Jack glanced back at the house, a dark expression flickering over his face. "Says in the fuckin will that I can't sell it less I live here for at least six months. What kind a bullshit is that?"

Ennis just shrugged, tossing feed, unwilling to agree aloud with the man Jack hated.

**010. Years**

"I'll make it," Jack slurred, pouring whiskey onto the unresponsive plot. "You just wait and see, old man. Bet I'll do it faster'n you did, too. Just watch me."

Ennis, having consumed a bit too much himself, just looked on, frozen in place.

"Didn't never want to help me, did you? Well, tell you what, you old bastard, I done and taught myself anyway. Even though you whupped me that day I said I was goin a rodeo. Went and fuckin did it anyway. What you think a that?"

His boot cracked against the stone, the only answer he'd get.


	2. Chapter 2

**011. Red**

He woke up in a cold sweat, almost falling off the couch as he shot up, his harsh breath coming like gun shots in the mausoleum stillness of the house.

He shuddered his way outside, skin nearly steaming on contact with the cold air, and retched up his dream in hot splatters on the new snow. When Jack's hand inquired on his back, he snapped away whipcord fast, churning up and over the boiling point.

"Don't touch me," he said, whisper scalding.

"Sorry," Jack said, throwing his hands up.

Ennis only let himself fall after Jack was back inside, safe.

**012. Grey**

Racers came fast and fierce from the west, roiling with the demonic energy that followed them down off the mountain; the flurries of snow that fell buried the land in vast stretches of silence, hiding away the place that Jack didn't want to call home any more, illuminating the place that Ennis was starting to think of as the one he'd lost so many years ago.

He constructed words and ideas, saying travel was impossible; he pushed the date back farther, like a truck driving off and shrinking in the distance.

A truck that he wouldn't be on, this time.

**013. White**

Evelyn watched them shoveling through the window, brow knotted, a hand clutched at the top of her dress.

She'd hoped—prayed—that Ennis's presence would be the balm Jack needed.

Yet every day that passed, she saw less and less of her son. His rage began to spread like a stain through the house, the same way John's blood had in the snow, widening and dispersing from the wound that would either freeze shut or bleed him dry until he'd lie just as his father, drained and broken in the unforgiving fields, alone, lost, white as the winter was long.

**014. Black**

The storm was so thick around him that when he slammed into the house he didn't even see her. She was a hand on his shoulder, a hot mug to warm his bloodless fingers, a quiet guide to the couch. He fought, crawling back into the present, chest so tight that it wouldn't hold air, only hurt. Her hand moved from his shoulder to his back, rubbing soft circles on the knot, gentle easing.

He loosened his white-knuckled grip, taking a shaky breath. "Thank you kindly, ma'am." His voice was rusty, unhinged.

She put a hand over his. "Always, son."

**015. Blue**

The picture was old, yellowed, curled at the edges and faded where time had taken its toll. She traced her fingers over the youthful lines, from his jaw to the smile she never saw again after nineteen forty-three, and bringing it closer, she strained to see his eyes, the blue of a clear and early summer, a rare gift.

But the summer had been lost somewhere in the battles he'd spent the next twenty years fighting every night in his sleep, crystallized to a winter so deep he'd died inside it.

She held the picture close. She needed to remember.

**016. Purple**

Jack traced his fingers on Ennis's hip, fitting them over the marking he'd just left.

"Had me a lot of those," he commented idly, laughing hollowly. "Always knew when I done somethin bad. Could tell how bad by the colors—yellow, blue, green. When he wanted me to remember for 'the rest of my goddamned days,' he used to say… they'd be black. One time, caught me jackin off, he done it to my whole hand. Thought sure as shit it would right fall off."

He held up his hand, eyes glazed and distant. "Looks alright now, though, don't it?"

**017. Brown**

The empty feed sacks filled the cab of the truck below Ennis's feet.

"Maybe we just ought a slaughter em all," Jack said, pulling out of the drive. "They don't do nothin but eat right now, anyhow."

"Was thinkin the biggest hog might be good for breedin. Got good haunches and belly on him."

"Naw," Jack said, "Won't be round long enough to do no breedin."

Ennis ran his finger along the seam between the window and car door. "You still so set on sellin this place?"

"The day them six months is up."

Ennis nodded, but not in agreement.

**018. Green**

The pieces of the envelope scattered above in the table in a reflection of the snowfall outside.

"Official. We got nothin left."

"Still got my Brokeback money—"

"We ain't goin a take your charity, Ennis."

Evelyn placed a hand on her son's. Jack looked at her, reluctantly. "Mama."

"Taught you better than that."

Jack sighed. "And when that's gone, what then? Go askin the neighbors for handouts?"

"We'll manage." She smiled. "Haven't we always?"

Jack squeezed her hand. "Yeah." He looked back at Ennis. "But what about you and Alma?"

Ennis shrugged, mouth quirked. "Reckon that I'll manage, too."

**019. Pink**

He snapped awake the second he heard it, halfway down the stairs even before his eyes were open. The scream reverberated in the air, coursing through his veins as his heart tried to claw its way out of his chest, all his limbs trembling with the force.

Jack's body knew the sound of fear very well.

He ran across the living room, threw himself bodily on Ennis's thrashing form and clamped a hand down over his mouth, muffling the sound and covering it up with a plea. "Ennis, Ennis, Ennis…"

He almost sobbed with relief when Ennis stilled, croaking, "Jack?"

**020. Colorless**

He lifted his hand, slowly, hardly aware of anything but their overloud heartbeats competing for dominance through the thin fabric of their shirts.

"What you doin?" Ennis finally said.

"You was screamin somethin awful." Jack leaned back, eyes adjusting to the dark. "Christ, friend, you look like you seen a ghost."

Ennis's face was drawn, blanched to a deathly pallor. "Don't say."

Jack considered. "What's say we get some color back into you?"

Ennis narrowed his eyes. "Been holdin out on me, Jack Twist?"

"Don't call it emergency whiskey for nothin."

Ennis smiled. "So what the fuck you waitin for?"


End file.
